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The Economist published an article Data Diving discussing new data that allows closer analysis of whether speculators are responsible for driving up oil prices. The short answer according to the speculators is probably not. And, even if they were, in the Economist's opinion, the critical importance of liquidity overwhelms any effect on higher prices.

The regulatory question is whether the Commodity Futures Trading Commission should limit the positions that speculators such as banks, hedge funds, and others take on oil because of the harmful influence that speculators have on the market.

... whether speculation has
really been responsible for spiking prices is a controversial issue. In
2008 the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a report
dismissing the role of speculators in last year’s startling run-up in
prices. But banks, hedge funds and others who bet on oil (without a use
for the stuff itself) still face limits on the positions they can take,
if Gary Gensler, the new CFTC head, can show that their influence in
markets does harm.

New disaggregated data show more clearly the role of speculators in the market:

On September 4th the CFTC added more evidence to the debate by releasing
what it said were more transparent data on market positions. Before
this month, the CFTC simply classified traders as “commercial” or
“non-commercial” in its weekly report on the overall long and short
positions in the market. Now it has started to disaggregate them
further, into producers and buyers, swap dealers and “managed money”.
The third category includes hedge funds.

The new data indicate that speculators (swap dealers and managed money) were long on oil in the
week to September 1st, with managed money holding a net long position by more than a 2-to-1 ratio. Those actually involved in the oil business (producers
and users) held positions that were net short by similar ratios. And
the swap dealers and managed-money players are bigger in the market,
both in terms of the contracts they hold and their own sheer numbers.

So, the speculators constitute the largest amount of the market and they take dramatically opposite positions in the market as compared with producers and users. Still, the speculators' analysts discount the ability of speculators to affect the market. I'm not market savvy enough to understand the speculators' analysis proffered by the Economist so would someone out there explain how this tells us that speculators are not influencing the market?

But analysts at Barclays Capital note that long swaps accounted for
just 6.4% of total futures and options contracts, not enough to drive
prices up on their own. Physical traders held more of the outstanding
long positions (10.3%) and held even more short positions. This one set
of numbers, in other words, does little to prove that speculators are
overriding market fundamentals to drive prices. New quarterly data also
released by the CFTC show that money flows to exchange-traded funds
(ETFs) in commodities failed to correlate strongly with last year’s
price surge.

Maybe some more numbers will help us sort this out (in favor of the speculators):

There are more disclosures to come. The CFTC says it will soon
release the newly disaggregated data going back three years. If those
numbers, like the quarterly ETF data, are equally unconvincing on the
role of speculation, the case for limiting positions will be weakened.

And the Economists' speculator-friendly bottom line:

And a strong counter-argument remains: that speculators provide crucial
liquidity. Even if they also have some effect on prices, taking them
out of the game could well do more harm than good. It is tempting to
look for scapegoats when high prices hurt consumers. But the real
culprits for oil-price volatility may be much more familiar: supply,
demand and global instability.